st introduction to what is to follow:
that question is,--"Would Napoleon have ultimately succeeded even if he
had triumphed instead of fallen upon the 18th of June 1815?" In other
words, was Waterloo one of these battles the winning or losing of which by
_either_ side, meant a corresponding decisive result to that side? Had
Wellington's command broken at Waterloo before the arrival of Blucher,
would Napoleon's consequent victory have meant as much to _him_ as his
defeat actually meant to the allies?

The answer of history to this question is, No. Even had Napoleon won on
that day he would have lost in the long run.

The date to which we must affix the reverse of Napoleon's effort is not
the 18th of June 1815, but the 19th of October 1812, when the Grand Army
began its retreat from Moscow; and the political decision, his failure in
which was the origin of his fall, was not the decision taken in June 1815
to advance against the Allies in Belgium, but the decision taken in May
1812 to advance into the vast spaces of Russia. The decisive action which
the largest view of history will record in centuries to come as the defeat
which ruined Napoleon took place, not south of Brussels, but near the town
of Leipzig, two years before. From the last moment of that three days'
battle (again the 19th of October, precisely a twelvemonth after the
retreat from Moscow had begun), Napoleon and the French armies are
continually falling back. Upon the 4th of April in the following year
Napoleon abdicated; and exactly a month later, on the 4th of May, he was
imprisoned, under the show of local sovereignty, in the island of Elba.

It was upon the 1st of March 1815 that, having escaped from that island,
he landed upon the southern coast of France. There followed the doomed
attempt to save somewhat of the Revolution and the Napoleonic scheme,
which is known to history as the "hundred days." Even that attempt would
have been impossible had not the greater part of the commanders of units
in the French army, that is, of the colonels of regiments, abandoned the
Bourbon government, which had been restored at Paris, and decided to
support Napoleon.

But even so, the experiment was hazardous in the extreme. Had the
surrounding governments which had witnessed and triumphed over his fall
permitted him, as he desired, to govern France in peace, and France alone,
this small part of the revolutionary plan might have been saved from the
general wreck of